* Disabling SELinux (/etc/sysconfig/selinux) can buy you a small (~7%) amount of performance, if security isn't a concern. It also decreases boot time by a few seconds.

* Disabling SELinux (/etc/sysconfig/selinux) can buy you a small (~7%) amount of performance, if security isn't a concern. It also decreases boot time by a few seconds.

−

* Disabling unnecessary services can almost cut the bootup time in half (18 seconds is doable in F11, as reported by bootchartd). Depending on your requirements for a netbook, it is safe to disable at least: sendmail, atd, nfs*, rpc*, portreserve, live*, avahi-daemon, cups, gpm, ip6tables, bluetooth, lvm2-monitor, mdmonitor, pcscd, and abrtd

+

* Disabling unnecessary services can almost cut the bootup time in half (18 seconds is doable in F12, as reported by bootchartd). Depending on your requirements for a netbook, it is safe to disable at least: sendmail, atd, nfs*, rpc*, portreserve, live*, avahi-daemon, cups, gpm, ip6tables, bluetooth, lvm2-monitor, mdmonitor, pcscd, and abrtd

<pre>

<pre>

chkconfig --list | grep ':on'

chkconfig --list | grep ':on'

Line 170:

Line 165:

mv /etc/event.d/tty[3-6] /etc/event.d.disabled

mv /etc/event.d/tty[3-6] /etc/event.d.disabled

</pre>

</pre>

−

* If GNOME, Disable most autostarted applications from Session and Startup preferences under the Applicaton Autostart tab.

+

* If GNOME, Disable most auto-started applications from Session and Startup preferences under the Applicaton Autostart tab.

* If GNOME, Disable Tracker indexer from both Search and Indexing and from Application Autostart.

* If GNOME, Disable Tracker indexer from both Search and Indexing and from Application Autostart.

* Use XFCE or LXDE instead of the heavier GNOME and KDE desktops.

* Use XFCE or LXDE instead of the heavier GNOME and KDE desktops.

Revision as of 21:19, 19 April 2010

This page is about installing and configuring Fedora on the Acer Aspire One netbook.
Please contribute if you can.

What doesn't yet work (and workarounds)

F13

All models:

Unknown

D250, A150, AO751h, AO532h ...:

Unknown

A110 (8GB):

Everything works

F12

(Tested with a D250 and partially with AO751h.)

If using a Live .iso, you must supply ssb.blacklist=1 as a boot parameter to avoid a hang. (Hit any key to avoid automatic boot, then Tab from the menu to change boot options. When you see the command line, type a space followed by the new parameter.) When rebooting after the initial installation, you will need to add the same parameter to the boot options from the Grub menu. If you are not presented with this menu automatically, try hitting Esc repeatedly during startup.

Depending on the exact hardware, your hard-wired network interface might not be detected. If this is the case, you cannot easily perform a network installation using a netinst.iso or boot.iso, because neither the hard-wired nor wireless network devices will be available. Use the Live or DVD install method, or create a driver disk.

If you are using the full DVD, multi-CD, or netinst.iso install methods, you will need to supply either ssb.blacklist=1 or noprobe as a boot option in order to avoid a hang.

After installation (or during installation, if you have network access) enable RPM Fusion repositories and install the kmod-wl driver. After rebooting, this will automatically add the ssb module to the blacklist, and also give you working wireless. If you are transferring files on removable media because you have no working network, be sure to also copy broadcom-wl, which is a required dependency. After these RPMs are installed, you will no longer need to add parameters at boot time.

If you don't show the battery status, add this line cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state in the file /etc/rc.local (AO751h).

Installation DVD

Miscellaneous setup

Card Reader

Both card readers work out of the box (if not, see: #Obsolete Instructions). In Fedora 12, the multi-card reader does work with Memory Sticks (at least in the AAO 110L model).

The "special" card reader on the left for adding storage is seen as just another plain card reader.
Use LVM if you want to extend storage space from the internal HDD/SSD, but don't try to suspend while using the card reader on the left as corruptions may result.
Note that with some models the reader on the right won't work with Memory Sticks.

Touchpad

Tap-to-click is disabled by default. If using GNOME, you can enable it by choosing System > Preferences > Mouse > Enable Tapping. For every other desktop (XFCE, LXDE, fluxbox, KDE, etc), or to have tap2click available at the login manager (gdm), use the following method to enable it:

In F13: To enable tap-to-click, paste the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf; for a full list of touchpad config options, see: man synaptics.

Speakers do not auto-mute when using headphones

In F11, add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/aceraspirefix.conf and then reboot.

options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire

Built-in Camera

Works out of the box. Use the cheese app which is installed by default to test. Other v4l2 webcam-using apps include: vlc, ekiga, ucview, camE, xawtv, zoneminder, and motion.

Notes on performance

If you have the 8 GB SSD/512MB RAM version, the flash performance may not be so good. Linux tries to swap often, and the SSD write speed is too slow (~ 4MB to 7.8MB/sec) to do much swapping. Use a lighter desktop like XFCE or add more RAM (which is not easy; you have to fully disassemble the Aspire One losing the warranty).

The "cheapest" way to get a somewhat sensible storage performance has been for me to add 2 8GB class 6 SDHC cards, and use LVM to create a stripped root volume. 2 benefits: 8GB => 24GB and read/write performance almost doubles, at least in shouting distance to average SATA discs.

If you have upgraded the RAM (1.5GB max) or you don't have a heavy load, it may help to disable swap, as well as to move /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/log, and /var/cache/yum off of the flash and onto tmpfs ramdisk. It may also help to use a journal-less ext2 VS ext3, and to include the "noatime,nodiratime" mount options in /etc/fstab to limit unnecessary writes.

Note: if installing F11 or F12 from liveusb, your root '/' filesystem will always be ext4 (f10 and previous was ext3). The benefits of ext2 is debatable, as the tiny performance increase is more than offset by long fsck's after unclean shutdowns.

If you really want to increase performance, use a fast SDHC memory card in the left reader, and use it for /home, /var and /usr.

Misc:

On SSD it is tremendously helpful to disable your web browsers' disk cache.

Disabling SELinux (/etc/sysconfig/selinux) can buy you a small (~7%) amount of performance, if security isn't a concern. It also decreases boot time by a few seconds.

Disabling unnecessary services can almost cut the bootup time in half (18 seconds is doable in F12, as reported by bootchartd). Depending on your requirements for a netbook, it is safe to disable at least: sendmail, atd, nfs*, rpc*, portreserve, live*, avahi-daemon, cups, gpm, ip6tables, bluetooth, lvm2-monitor, mdmonitor, pcscd, and abrtd

xorg.conf

A sample xorg.conf that provides a larger virtual screen - also configures my 19" VGA screen when connected...adjust the Screen and Display sections for whatever display you have connected to your VGA port

NOTE: this seems to require xserver 1.6 and xrandr 1.3 which are Fedora 11 and this may not work in earlier versions of Fedora.